Posted
by
Roblimo
on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @07:20PM
from the Does-Apple-get-30%-of-each-confession? dept.

slshwtw writes "Pope Benedict XVI has recently encouraged priests to blog and promoted Christian Netiquette. Now apparently the Roman Catholic church has sanctioned a 'Confession App,' available through iTunes for $1.99. Apparently it doesn't replace 'traditional,' in-person confession, but walks one through the process, even suggesting sins you may wish to confess."'

As I keep saying, if God didn't want me to covet my neighbour's ass, He wouldn't have given her such a magnificent ass;)

You sure ? After all this is the guy who put a fruit tree in the middle of a garden and put a "do not eat" sign on it. He's a bit of dick like that.

Wow. Really? You have a pretty messed up view of god there pal. You also don't seem to believe in personal responsibility. Man was given a paradise to live in with all the food he could ever eat, immortality, a wife, the peace of mind of naivety with just one simple rule. Not 10 commandment but just one and man still had to screw that one up.

Wow. Really? You have a pretty messed up view of god there pal. You also don't seem to believe in personal responsibility. Man was given a paradise to live in with all the food he could ever eat, immortality, a wife, the peace of mind of naivety with just one simple rule. Not 10 commandment but just one and man still had to screw that one up.

You do realize that it didn't actually happen [wikipedia.org] right ? It's an allegory about not listening to wimmenfolk or about never questioning authority or some other positive message like that like that, I forget. I'm really a big believer in personal responsibility but I'm also pragmatic enough to know that "you don't put the cat next to the milk" as the dutch saying goes. I was actually going for a funny mod but got an insightful instead, you got to love Slashdot.

"but walks one through the process, even suggesting sins you may wish to confess."

If one makes it through life in the Catholic Church to the point where they have an iPad or iWhatever they don't need an app to tell give them suggestions for confessions. Trust me, they'd know.:) I'm sure many would be happy if just telling them to their app was good enough to save a trip to the box.

It's sorta brilliant: if you know you have to take out your phone and mark a sin, you might be less likely to commit it. I did a quit-smoking program like that once — you had to simply mark if you were smoking. But those few seconds of "ahh, gotta get out the paper, mark it down..." etc could make it not worth the trouble.

(But yeah, i was hoping I could use the sin app, then pass the phone to the priest and he could TAP some kind of auto-penance before giving me lec

Why bother to RTFA? "If you are worried about all your personal sins being viewed in cyberspace, fear not -- the app customizes each user's list and is password protected for privacy. Once you go to confession, your nefarious revelations are wiped away."

So it's just a digital version of those little books with portions of catechism, prayers, checklists for sacraments (for example - confession), etc.? Plus a notepad? (even safer, actually!) Not much of news...

Anonymity isn't particularly inherent - you might as well be in quite intimate relation (I'm going to hell for this pun;) ) with your confessor. And similarly, nothing forces you to maintain strict confidentiality; that is of concern only to your confessor (well, I believe there is also some rule about maintaining the confidentiality of accidentally heard, etc., confession of someone else's)

1) It's published by a private company, not the church2) It got an imprimatur from the Vatican : "In the Catholic Church an imprimatur is an official declaration by a Church authority that a book or other printed work may be published." Basically just a label "this is OK."3) The church teaches that absolution can only be given by God through a priest.

"[T]he new app doesn't replace traditional confession. You still have to go to a priest for absolution.... It leads you through an 'Examination of Conscience' to help you figure out what your real sins are -- and not just by retreading your run of the mill 10 Commandments."

In sacramental preparation, Roman Catholics are taught to privately undertake an examination of conscience before entering the confessional. This is just, shall we say, an expert system for the process.

Darn. I was hoping this would do away with all of the pesky washing and cleaning and bleaching between the crimes and the absolution. No more having to worry about being hit by a bus between when you hit someone with a bus and drive in to the confessional.

isn't an iPhone kinda incompatible with your religion? It's a large, unnecessary expenditure of money and resources when there are millions of poor. Plus it's a status symbol, and I'm pretty sure pride is a sin (correct me if I'm wrong, not a Catholic)...

It's like the guy in the $80,000 SUV with Jesus on his license plate. I think he's missing the point...

Yeah, but that's just the cost to you. There's a much larger societal cost to getting an iPhone to you. You're just not seeing that cost because it's heavily subsidized by your monthly bill from AT&T, plus reduced by cheap Chinese labor with no environmental regulations. There was just a story about Chinese business men not bringing factories to the US because, although they'd save a bundle on shipping, the cost of meeting our environmental regulations was too high. Plus there are stories of the Chinese

Alaska is sending fresh water to China in oil tankers, kind of a scary thought since I like drinking water and I don't want to compete with 3 billion Chinese for it...

What? No we're not. A few insane people are thinking about it (we've got plenty, just bring your own jar) but the catch has been the tanker. You can't just clean out anything floating and put potable water in it and the costs of making a new purpose built water tanker seem to be too high. Everything from freezing the water to shipping it in giant plastic bags has been proposed, but nothing yet has come of it.

Yeah, but that's just the cost to you. There's a much larger societal cost to getting an iPhone to you. You're just not seeing that cost because it's heavily subsidized by your monthly bill from AT&T, plus reduced by cheap Chinese labor with no environmental regulations.

And while you were typing this reply - did you think about where your computer's parts were made?

Children.. are starving, or alternatively working in factories making mobiles devices like your shiny iPhone for mere pennies a day.

Meanwhile, you're wasting precious time and resources chiding others instead of saving the children. You really need to stop basking in the luxury of the internet while children without electricity are starving and being taking advantage of by evil multinationals. Tsk. Tsk.

Obsession with status would be closer to envy than pride. And the whole charity thing... well, it says to give to the poor and be willing to sacrifice what one has for the common good but most people don't interpret that as meaning "to be poor". Kinda hard to keep a large faith going if you don't let the faithful have nice toys.

Yeah, but, is the purpose of Christianity to keep a large faith going? After all, I'm talking principle here rather than practicality. And wanting the iPhone would be envy, but I was talking about the feeling of superiority one gets by having the latest and greatest phone...

Yeah, but, is the purpose of Christianity to keep a large faith going? After all, I'm talking principle here rather than practicality.

The vatican has covered up countless cases of child sex abuse by its priests. Christianity is about money and power, not principle.

1) Christianity is not the same as being Catholic. I, am Christian. I happen not to be Catholic.
2) No, that's not the purpose of Christianity.
3) Whatever the Vatican has or has not done doesn't change the fact that there are many millions upon millions of Catholics with pure, Jesus loving hearts. Yes, they sin (as we all do), but they certainly have little in common with pedophiles and sex abusers.

No. A particular persons decision to purchase an iPhone given other uses of the money may or may not be prudent, and certainly might be influenced by any number of sins, but the iPhone isn't inherently incompatible with Catholicism.

It's a large, unnecessary expenditure of money and resources when there are millions of poor.

Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival.

Plus it's a status symbol

Purchasing an iPhone out of vanity would certainly be sinful, but the fact that society treats it as a status symbol does not make the device itself inherently sinful.

If you gave all your money to the poor, as Jesus commanded, you would not afford an I Phone.

If you gave all your money to the poor, you also couldn't afford a meal.

And, of course, those you gave your money did the same with the money that was now theirs, neither could they.

But Jesus didn't say everyone should give their money to the poor, he told a rich man who was trying to approach salvation as a checklist of items to mark off that that's what he needed to do beyond what he already had. The most common interpretation of that interaction is that it has essentially the same message as the story of

"Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival."

It does not explicitly forbid it. But the church quite often brings up the saying of it being easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful

Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful to buy unnecessary expensive items when you could have given the money to the poor.

Wrong. The Church is not silent on the matter, its a key part of the social doctrine of the Church. You seem to be mistaking the absence of a one-size-fits-all simple rule that lets people be lazy, look up a yes-or-no answer, and do no moral reflection for silence on the issue, but that is a mistake.

The Church's social teaching moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership that clearly refers to its necessary relation to the common good. Man “should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others”. The universal destination of goods entails obligations on how goods are to be used by their legitimate owners. Individual persons may not use their resources without considering the effects that this use will have, rather they must act in a way that benefits not only themselves and their family but also the common good. [...]

I don't know what world you're from where Catholics think it's a sin to buy anything expensive, but it sure isn't a sin to buy a freaking iPod. This app helps you figure out what to confess about when you go to confession. Yes, it's a sin to buy too many expensive things, but an iPod of all things isn't even close to that limit. Troll harder next time.

I'm not a Catholic, but, to be fair, spending money on yourself is not necessarily incompatible with religion. Yes, it does say in the Bible that it will be "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," but it's not because the person is rich. (For those who don't know, Jesus makes this statement after a rich man asked him what he needed to do to enter heaven. Jesus told him to go and sell his possessions and then follow Him. The rich man went a

Depends on the person and their own individual beliefs - that, and you're assuming that all Christians actually follow what they say, and have a real faith. I know many Christians from various denominations that attend church simply because they were raised that way - "Sunday Christians" who act very piously then proceed to bitch about others, turn away from people in need and generally do everything that they shouldn't be doing.I'm a Christian (not Catholic though), and sadly I have to agree with a lot of

I see nothing in the article to support the claim that this app has been sanctioned by the Catholic Church, besides the fact the author seems to be a priest, and seems to like it. This is an app developed by a private company [littleiapps.com] with no official connection to the Church (and a horribly broken website, to boot).

The app was developed by a small group including a friend of mine. It's sanctioned only insofar as Bishop Rhodes (his local bishop) has given it an imprimatur. An imprimatur is usually given to books. It's is not an endorsement or any kind of insistence that anyone should actually buy the product, but only a statement to the effect that nothing harmful to the faith is contained within. Not that an app really needs an imprimatur, but it's a way for the bishop to show support for Catholics utilizing contemporary media for the promotion of faith.

To be more specific, the imprimatur is not generally mandatory for anything other than prayer books and for books on religious and moral matters intended for use in the context of educational programs, though its encouraged-but-not-required for books on religious and moral topics not intended for use in educational programs, and is in theory available for any published work. Other than the form (as it is an interactive app, rather than a book) this seems to, from the descriptions, have elements of a prayer

Seeing that it can help you find out how you've sinned, I'd like to see a penance calculator in the next version. For example: you could enter that you watched a naughty movie, and it would respond with 10 Hail Mary's per girl with a 5x multiplier per cup.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also have pretty good movie reviews [usccb.org] where they cut directly to the chase as it were. Like their review of Black Swan:

"Darren Aronofsky's nightmarish, morally muddled drama plays on the extremes of sexual repression and debauched license and, whether read as insisting on the necessity of indiscriminate experience or as a cautionary tale, presents its heroine's experimentation with voyeuristic excess. Strong sexual content, including graphic lesbian and nonmarital heterosexual activity, as well as masturbation, drug use, a few instances of profanity, much rough and some crude language and numerous sexual references. O -- morally offensive.."

Makes me actually want to watch it.

That reads like it was some kind of porno, which it totally wasn't. The Catholic's who wrote that would no doubt be happier seeing small boys dancing instead.

I thought everyone who owned an iPhone prayed to Jobs (thrice daily, while facing Cupertino), has WWDC and Macworld Expo instead of communion, confessed their dalliances with non-Apple products to Geniuses at the Apple Store, and did penance by lashing out at those who criticize Apple products online.

Wouldn't being involved in Catholicism violate their First Commandment or something?

I dare say that this app is designed to make that close to impossible. I gather from reading the comments that TFA may mention that aspect though of course I haven't read it. The real security threat is the FBI application that looks similar and is spelled only slightly differently in the APP store, it's a link to "angry stool pigeons".

I seem to remember from before I escaped religion that they gave you a penance each time, which ultimately amounts to reinforcement of your submission to a belief system without evidence of its validity.

If it was just a straightforward extortion, I'd almost feel better about it all. When it comes down to it, I only ever did the same things every other kid did, and nothing worth the trouble of blackmail. Certainly not worth the threat of Hell.